I don't remember exactly, but I think I started this session. Am I talking okay for you, Wendy? Speaking of the practice of suchness. And the instruction in the Diamond Sutra that a bodhisattva should produce a thought which has no abode. Do you remember that?

[01:04]

It produces thought which is unsupported by sights, sounds, colors, smells, tastes and mind objects. Unsupported means it doesn't rely on them, means it doesn't attach to them or approach them, but is born in co-dependence with them. This is the Bodhisattva's mind of compassion.

[02:06]

This is the verse that first awoke the young man, Mr. Lu, who later became known as the Sixth Patriarch. This is the Diamond Sutra's way of talking about teaching Zen practice. Later, the Zen ancestor Dogen wrote a little poem about this instruction, about the mind that has no abode. Coming, going, the waterfowl leave no trace nor do they need a guide.

[03:24]

And the people here, sitting this week, coming and going leave no trace, nor do you need a guide This is the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy, the mother

[04:42]

of the gentle Buddhas. This week you have sat very well, generously, carefully, patiently, enthusiastically, one-pointedly, and with wisdom. Your effort is the living blood of the Buddhas.

[05:56]

All of us together have been working this week joyously with the intention to help all suffering creatures, including ourselves. I'm deeply impressed by your effort and very grateful to all of you. And as we said in the beginning, sometime during the week, some of us would wish the week was over.

[07:21]

that it was so hard we wanted it to end. And now today, it's time to end. And at least one of us is sad to see it end. sad that we must part. Many of you had difficulty One person sprained her ankle. Another one hurt his foot and got infected.

[08:28]

A dear friend had a brain hemorrhage. Several people got sick. But we kept going. So I'm wondering today how to settle with suchness. How to simply let suchness be it.

[09:43]

Today the suchness, today what's happening may be an aching heart. How can one settle with an aching heart? And I suggest don't approach it. If an aching heart gets an inch away, it's very difficult to bear.

[11:10]

But if I get really close to it, I can go on. It's the separation from it. So in the realm of perfect wisdom, zazen does zazen. The body sits the body, and the heart bleeds through the heart. As our ancestor, Tendonojo Daisho, said, like a mouth,

[12:45]

hanging in emptiness. This is a verse about a wind bell, a wind bell, like a mouth hanging in emptiness. It doesn't care what direction the wind is blowing. south, east or west, all teach perfect wisdom.

[13:55]

Ding-dong. Da-da-da. Da-da-da. With the aid of the six paramitas, we can sit still and settle into what's happening as such without any distance from it, without any separation between subject and object.

[15:34]

The five skandhas are dangerous murderers if they are over there. But if we don't approach the five skandhas, they are sources of bliss. bliss parts. So if we have an aching heart, I would say we're lucky.

[17:27]

This keeps us sane and on the earth and connected to the other suffering beings all over the world. but we shouldn't let this pain demoralize us. So I search for a way to settle this aching heart exactly on the aching heart. This is not, it's not so easy sometimes to find a way to settle the aching heart right exactly on the aching heart. How to fit the ache with the heart is not so easy.

[18:31]

How to let the aching heart be an aching heart, how to carefully take care of the aching heart, how to be patient with the aching heart, how to be enthusiastic about having an achy heart, how to be concentrated on an aching heart, and how to understand then that an aching heart also is empty and really doesn't have any... there's no aching heart in the aching heart. We don't say this is easy. This settling in Soto Zen is called just sitting or not moving. And another agenda which I revealed to you is that in Zen practice, when we talk about practicing just sitting still or zazen,

[20:41]

Some people don't understand the great support, the supporting practices which are one with that effort. So that's why I've been trying to show that. And also the support of so many living beings that are necessary in order to practice just sitting. Another one of our ancestors is Yakusan Igen Dayo Sho.

[22:07]

After sitting one day, a monk asked the great ancestor, Yaksan, Yue Shan, What are you thinking of in the immobile state of sitting? And Yao Shan said, I think of the unthinking." And the monk said, how can one think of the unthinking? And Yau Shan said, by non-thinking. Some people call this non-thinking serene reflection.

[23:35]

or clear, vivid awareness of no thought. So in Zen when you hear of no thought, it doesn't mean no thinking. It means an actual type of thinking. which is called, which is nicknamed, no thought. No thought is serene awareness of no thought, serene awareness of how, how's thinking. It is a type of thinking.

[24:41]

It is what is called authentic thinking, or the way a Buddha thinks, or the way you think when you're sitting still by the graces of all living beings. And Dogen Zenji said, this having been confirmed as the great teacher's saying, we should study immobile sitting and transmit it correctly. He's asking us to study immobile sitting and not only that, but transmit it. This is a big responsibility. He dares to ask this of us. And then he says, herein lies a thorough investigation of the immobile sitting handed down by the Buddha way.

[25:52]

And I'm reading to you from Admonitions for Zazen, where he investigates thoroughly sitting still, the sitting still which has been transmitted by the Buddhas. And then he says, although thoughts on the state of immobile sitting are not limited just to this ancestor, Yesan's Saying is the best, the very best. So Dogen Zenji's favorite teaching on sitting still is this one, namely, thinking is unthinking. Thinking is unthinking, or there is no place in the universe where thinking does not function

[27:27]

So I really don't know about this objectively, whether it is possible for anyone to maybe send a spaceship out to some star and the spaceship could land there and the spaceship could check to see if there's any thinking on that star. Now if there's nobody on the spaceship, no living being on the spaceship who's thinking, maybe just a machine can check to see if there's any thinking there. Maybe that machine would find out there's no thinking out here. I don't know. You could dream up many kinds of experiments to prove that someplace in the universe there's no thinking, that there's someplace where thinking doesn't reach. But as far as helping suffering creatures, Dogen Zenji is saying, try on his teaching that there's no place where thinking doesn't reach.

[29:08]

Thinking of the unthinking means that thinking is the unthinking. The thinking that you and I do is the unthinking. Neither thinking nor non-thinking is how's thinking. H-O-W apostrophe S, thinking, how's thinking, which can be either the thinking which how does or how is thinking.

[30:31]

It's not that thinking and the unthinking and non-thinking and how's thinking are three different things. How seems to be a question, but actually how points to the realm where thinking and the unthinking and non-thinking live together. How points

[31:54]

to the place, to the way, to this place, to this way, to this time, where we do not approach colors, we do not approach feelings, we do not approach conceptions. or emotions or consciousness. We do not approach pain. This not approaching is house thinking. This not approaching is the thought which has no abode.

[33:00]

This not approaching is perfect wisdom. Perfect wisdom is not just liberation from suffering, It is also liberation from practice. It is liberation from spiritual practice. And those who are liberated from spiritual practice, practice. Just to celebrate their freedom from it. And some of those who are not liberated from spiritual practice also practice to celebrate their bondage to it. As somebody said,

[34:21]

Before and after attaining Buddhahood, we eat food. Buddhists don't stop eating. And before and after attaining Buddhahood, we practice. It's just that after, we're free from food and practice. Once the heart is settled on the heart, the heart is released. But once it's released, it still keeps being settled where it is. And when it's settled, the owner of the heart can go to work for others with great effectiveness and without any hindrance.

[35:27]

I have a picture here of a Zen master. Can you see him? Can you see him? No? Can you see him, Jim? There's not much to see. He looks like this. He's got a stick like this and he's going. Not all Zen masters look like this. This one's, his name is Tenke. He's a Soto Zen master who lived from 1648 to 1735. And he had a very, he was known to have extremely penetrating insight. He's also known

[36:52]

as not understanding Dogen Zenji very well. Many Soto Zen priests say, yeah, I just really, you know, he's got it just, he just has this brilliant insight, you know, just frighteningly deep insight, but he didn't understand Dogen very well. Want a picture of him? Well, I guess this could be reproduced by the wonders of modern science. Is that in the kitchen now? Uncle Sam, you're the one that says, I want you to practice today? Yes. I know.

[37:54]

Oh, you mean the actual living person? Yes. Oh. Well, he went on vacation. He's really grumpy now because he went to his daughter's wedding today. And he's really grumpy about this. They make him wear a suit and, you know, It's an Orthodox Jewish wedding that he's going to, and he's not Jewish, so I don't think he can't go in or something like that. They have to find somebody who's, you know, clean to give the bride away or something like that. So he's pretty grumpy right now. So there's grumpy, and there's dumpy, and sleepy, Slumpy. Slumpy and... What?

[38:56]

Lumpy. Snoopy. Snoozy. Huh? Did we get them all? Queezy. Shaky. Frumpy. Doozy. Dizzy. Dizzy. These are the people that helped Snow White. These are the people? Yeah. What? Oh, Goofy? Goofy's helping. Yeah. The whole body is like the whole body, the enthusiastic, happy body.

[40:13]

I'm growing grass around my house. I have all these little baby grasses. And they're going, they're going. And some of my baby grasses are getting burned by the sun. And it really hurts me to see those little baby grasses getting burned by the sun. This morning I tried to pull a little board in front of them to block them from the sun. But I think a lot of them are already dead. Of course, there's millions of them, but still, to see those little babies shriveled up there, the whole body is like a mouth hanging in emptiness, not asking whether the breeze is from the north, the south, east or west.

[41:20]

For all alike preach the perfect wisdom. Da-da, da-da, da-da. Just suchness, without delay, without distance. Dogen Zenji thought that was really a good poem. It's his teacher's poem. He really liked it. He thought it was the best thing he ever heard. He said, I looked through all these books. I never found anything this good. He said to Dendon Yojo.

[42:22]

Dogen Zenji also said that to practice and confirm all things while carrying a self is delusion. So you come to practice Zen practice and realize Buddhism, to do that while carrying a little self with you, that's delusion. For all things to advance forward and confirm themselves, that's awakening. So the trick is to somehow let things happen without bringing the self along on top, projecting a self onto it. So we need to become free of this self-cleaning.

[44:29]

Without, if you don't carry a self, then this practice we do is actually awakening itself. So he first of all wants us to practice without a practice in freedom anyway, not without a self. There can be a self there, that's fine. There needs to be one moment by moment, otherwise you don't know where to put your food at lunchtime. But rather, without clinging to a self, we need to practice the way. Without clinging to our own ideas. And our painful heart guides us and shows us where the self-clinging is. Just like the pain in my back helped me find my posture from the inside. So the pain inside also guides you to find your self-clinging, which is that thing that separates yourself.

[45:35]

So it's a body practice or a heart practice. as a way to become free from self-clinging. It's through this kind of erect body that we wake up. Each of us has a different kind of a wreck. Now this leaky, tumbledown grass shack

[46:44]

left opening for the moon. Now I gaze at it. But all the while, it's reflected in the teardrops falling on my sleeve. You can gaze at the moon, or you can see it in your teardrops. Either way. All you need is a tumbledown grass shack to sit in. Fortunately, very fortunately, each of us has one.

[47:56]

We call it the body. The body is the deepest thought. The body is the unthinking. Think of it. Think of your body. And how do you think of your body? That's right. How do you think of your aching heart? Thank you for your patience.

[49:33]

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